Customer Reviews:
Zune - used
I was skeptical about ordering a “used/returned” Zune. It is fine. Works like a dream. I love that it has the FM tuner where the iPods don’t come with them. We got the order right away without any trouble.

Ummm, less than I had expected
At first, I was only going to give it 1 star, but then I changed my mind and gave it 2 because it’s an okay player…just not the one for me.

Wow! Was I the only one who didn’t know that the Zune was as big as the old cellular-bag phone? Let me say that it was huge, clunky, big and everything I never wanted in an MP3 player.

I have a Zen MicroPhoto 4 GB that has lasted for more than 3 years. I was ready to step up my game and tried the new Zen - Error! - I bought 3 of them and all 3 broke, froze, wouldn’t turn back on…you name it. I quickly sent them all back.

I figured I’d try the ‘well-known’ Zune and for the same price of an 8 GB, I’d get 30GB. Well…I kept it for 2 days and then sent it back.

Pros: 30 GB! I’d never run out of space for downloads

Cool radio feature that shows the songs playing

Great background/wall paper

Touch screen like capabilities

I’m sure it had other cool features that I never got to

Cons: Huge!! I mean, big like it wouldn’t fit into any pockets

Can only buy music from Zune market place

Not compatible w/Windows Media Player 11

It was a mess

Once my return is cleared, I’m buying the Sony 8 GB and I’ll let you know.

This is a great product
My previous Zune accidentally was broken when i dropped it on the floor. I then turned to Amazon to see if they had any good deals on Zunes and then I found a awesome deal. It works great and I have not had any problems with it.

Customer Reviews:
Great Product & Seller!!!!!!!
A great product with a lot of features. The only downfall I have found is the battery life. But still well worth the purchase!

Archos is alright but software add-ons sneak up on you
I’ve been very happy with the function of my Archos 605. My only complaint is that there are extra charges for the software needed to get on the internet and for viewing most movies.

In bright sunlight it may be a little hard to see the screen and unless you are in a quiet place, forget the one external speaker and stick to the ear buds.

This is perfect for the airports and airplanes I spend a lot of time in.

With the basic unit, it can only be charged from USB. I just got a 12V USB car plug and can charge it in a rental car or use a 120VAC to 12VDC adaptor in hotel rooms.

Keep in mind, with the 80 gigs of space, plenty can be placed on the hard drive.

Great player, but battery life needs to be better
I think this archos player is a nice product. I bought an ipod classic, but the screen is just to small to be a video player so returned it. I took it on long trip and it came in handy. The interface is no apple design, but gets the job done. Didn’t like I had to buy $80 in upgrades to get what I needed, but I guess that’s why the price to buy is somewhat reasonable. Battery like could be a lot better.

Customer Reviews:
Great Radio
Easy to set up. Radio was playing 5 minutes after opening the box. The sound is amazing from such a compact system. If you have heard the Bose Wave, the Sangean WR-2 is very close at a third of the price. We live about 35 miles from the available RDS FM stations. The external FM antenna brings them in just fine. We use the radio in the kitchen so have not messed with any alarm options. Could not be more pleased and would highly recommend this radio.

Great Little Radio
Exeptional quality radio. I have a CC Crane radio (also made by Sangean)which is supposed to have the best AM reception around. It has great reception alright. But the WR-2 is every bit as good and sounds much better. FM is very good as well. It sounds darn near as nice as my Bose. No buyers remorse here.

Quality radio here
A no nonsense radio that sounds really nice. I keep it in the garage with no climate control here in Florida and it sounds great every time. The only drawback is I wish it had more preset memory than the five available with this unit.

Customer Reviews:
Nice Comfort and Sound
The sound in these headphones are absolutely wonderful! The fit and comfort is fantastic in these headphones as well. I would recommend them for anyone!

Sounds great, but hurts my ears
These headphones have great sound quality for the price, but I cannot wear them for more than 15 minutes at a time because they hurt my ears. It would be great if the tension was adjustable!

Satisfied completely
I enjoy my new headphones.they are comfortable and I still have the flexibility to move around with them on.

Customer Reviews:
Decent but not sufficient - why I returned it
I got this player for long plane trips after much research. I was torn between this and the Archos 605. I went with this one because it supported lots of formats. I ended up returning it, and am waiting for something better to come out.

Here are the problems I had with it, in decreasing order of importance:

1. It says it supports lots of doc formats like word, excel, and pdf. In actuality, the only formats it natively supports is text and csd. it provides software (windows only) to transcode to csd. The kicker is that apparently the software requires that you have installed the program controlling the format to transfer from. E.g., to convert an excel doc, you need to have microsoft excel installed. Ugh. I feel deceived. Further, I wasn’t impressed with the csd viewing capabilities.

2. Frustrated, I converted some files to text and tried them out. The player has some bugs where it only display portions of the text file! Somehow they managed to mess up the text viewer on the player so it only displays a small prefix of the text file.

3. On video files I was watching, it has a bug in which the audio is 5 seconds behind the video - wow did that give me a headache.

4. The radio reception on the device sucks, and the auto-record does not support once-a-week recording.

5. The video player has a bug where if you fastforward twice in succession, the player locks up.

6. It was clunky to forward and rewind thru video. You have to go thru a bunch of menus to specify how much to forward and rewind, and it doesn’t display images during forward/rewind so it’s hard to tell if you’ve skipped over the spot you wanted to fastforward to.

7. On the plane, with a pair of Sennheiser HD-280 headphones, I found myself wishing the volume control would go louder.

On the plus side, it was easy to connect to Mac and Linux boxes. It just appears as a USB drive, which was nice.

I don’t like the Archos player because of the nickle-and-diming of extra features and limited format support. so I think I’m just going to sit out of the market until something more compelling comes along.

Best Portable Video Player!
I have owned the Archos 605 WiFi which is a great PMP (Portable Multimedia Player). It plays videos, music, can go online and has a touch screen interface, but what it lacks is the amount of formats it supports. It is limited and you are required to purchase plug ins to access more formats and even then it’s pretty much limited. Now comes a player that solves this problem and that is the Cowon A3. The A3 can play everything the Archos 605 can plus way more extra formats. It supports MKV which no other player supports (I’m throwing that out since a lot of my videos are in MKV) The screen is huge for viewing videos and the audio can be configured. Battery life is good for video (estimated 7 hours) but audio is not so great (9 hours) though I have a feeling you can get more out of it if you lowered the brightness of the LCD screen and the power saver mode to 10 sec. One key factor is it can play HD resolution (720p only) which no other player can do. Here are my few gripes (hoping that future firmware updates will take care of them, though a few are physical traits and nothing can be done)

1. No native H.264 support (a lot of my video files are in H.264 and this is something that will probably be resolved through a firmware update)

2. No touch screen interface! Using the stick can be annoying at times especially when you want it to go down but you press down on it instead.

3. Fingerprints! The Archos 605 had plastic buttons which did not smudge, whereas the A3 smudges easily.

4. No pouch included.

Even with these inconveniences, the A3 easily surpasses the Archo 605 because of the amount of formats it supports and the battery life is much higher. Also, one important factor, the charge time is much less since the Archos 605 does not include an AC adapter and only USB Charging. Charge time is 5 hours (A3) vs. 10 hours (Archos 605).

Of course I only mentioned the Archos 605 but this player easily bests the following popular players: iTouch/iPods, Creative Zen Vision W, and the iRiver. I highly recommend this for those who are into watching video, though not recommended for listening to music because of the battery life (there are cheaper and better alternative options for just music and iAudio 7 happens to be one of them)

Note: This is not a final rating as I am waiting for firmware updates and the score will change according to those updates.

Update: I still stand by when I said that there is no native H.264 support (though there was a firmware update recently it has not resolved the problems for playing the format) Once this is resolved I will post it up

Update 03/19/08: A new firmware update was just released and it improves on the following: extended music playing hours from 9 to 13 hours, improved avi playing, improved subtitles being displayed (there are a lot more but these are the major improvements that I find noteworthy) What it’s still missing is being able to play H.264, specifically with MKV. There are no improvements from the last time as only a very few MKV. files work on the player and even the files that work with the player suffers from bad frame rate. Hopefully the next firmware will fix the biggest problem with this player, MKV. support and improvement with the H.264 One thing to add, I am glad they fixed the avi as it plays much better this time around.

Customer Reviews:
Beware of iPod Touch
I purchased the 16GB iPod Touch for Christmas but unfortunately it stopped functioning after only 3 months of normal use. When I tried to return the product to an Apple store they ‘reset’ the iPod, which appeared to fix the problem. As soon as I got home it was clear that the iPod was still not functioning correctly. I went back to the store the next day but was told that they were too busy to help me. Apple then sent me to another store (30 minute drive away) where I was forced to wait for 3 hours before anyone would help me. When I finally got someone to help, it took about 5 minutes for them to realize that the iPod was defective at which point they replaced the device.

Three trips to two different Apple stores with over 5 hours of waiting. And to top it all off they refused to replace the plastic screen protector (which I had purchased from Apple).

Save yourself a headache and try another product. Or at least wait another year until they figure out how to make this product without defects.

almost perfect
I love this thing for what I use it for - internet access on a small portable format. I have a different phone carrier then AT&T so I didn’t want the iPhone but I like having the internet at my fingertips on a such a small yet functional format. I prefer my Creative Zen for music so I really don’t use this for songs but I have 150 songs or so that I carry around for entertainment. I also love the media capability (movies take up about 2 GB each but tv shows are better and easy to download). This product offers all of the options the iPhone does but without the cell phone part. Sure it costs a lot but it is worth it. Instead of carrying around a portable dvd player, a MP3 player, palm pilot and my laptop - I can just pack this little beauty for everyday use and trips. The iTouch is so slim it can fit in my pocket. I am seriously considering changing to AT&T and getting the iPhone to cut down on carrying my cell phone in addition to the iTouch. The price is still a little steep and I’m not a big fan of AT&T but the convenience is winning me over. I will never get rid of my Creative Zen so the music is one feature I don’t use as much. Also, I am thinking about getting a Creative media player and comparing since I love that product line. I have a Blackberry that I really love and it provides the same intenet accessibility but the screen is much smaller. Also, all of the options are on the menu and available at one touch - media, weather, music, maps, etc. I have to navigate around a little more on my Blackberry to get comparable options. The iTouch is so easy to figure out and use which is nice. The only drawback I have found is the touch controls (they don’t work as well in cold weather and adjustments are hard). Another big negative (hence the 4 stars) is the lack of expansion. This product does not allow for memory cards like other products and 2 of the 16 GB is already used for applications! Also, it does not allow for easy exchange of information but that’s Apple products in general.

The iTouch is perfect for people who do not have AT&T as their carrier but still want the convenience of the iPhone options. This will definitely cut down on all the gadgets you need to carry around and I recommend it.

Please read before buying
I purchased an IPOD touch w/software updates (3) weeks ago. It is great for music and short videos. But you cannot download large files - such as movies. According to the blogs on apple.com, it appears a large number of people are having the same problem. Your will receive an error message that reads, Ipod cannot be synced, the disk could not be read from or written to.

From the blogs it appears most users are using the software -XP Windows. Please read over the blogs.

I will be returning mine and exchange it for an ipod nano.

Customer Reviews:
Great Value For The Money
I have a SanDisk 8GB player that I love, so when it was time to get my daughter one, I wanted something not too expensive but at the same time simple enough for her to use and operate/maintain.

At a cost of $50, the 2GB Sansa Clip Player was perfect for my 10 yr old daughter. I was able to show her with relative ease how to use it…within the first 20 minutes of playing with it, she had figured all the features out. It’s a perfect compromise if you want to get someone who loves to have music all the time but doesn’t want to deal with installing software and setup issues related to some of the bigger MP3 players out there.

I was surprised at the reception for the FM radio since I was expecting no reception at all. And the headphones were a surprise too…normally I never keep the ones that come with a player because of the sound quality, but these weren’t too bad. My little girl and I was so happy with the purchase…my husband saw it, started listening to it and now wants one (which I ordered right away). And I plan on getting myself one just to keep in my purse as a backup for the times I don’t have my 8GB player with me for music.

instant crash
My Sansa Clip crashed after three days of use. I tried to flash the memory, and re-install the firm-ware, but the updater will not run unless you change the command service code. Hands down the most problematic electronic device I have owned.

Sandisk Sansa Clip 2 GB
Great little Music player! It also has a radio and does very well recording voice. At first I was having trouble with my computer not recognizing it, but after some fiddling with the boot system I think its good to go now. There are very few negitive reviews for this product, that’s why I chose this one.